Review: 667 (2017)

Royston Tan’s recent movie, 667,is Singapore’s first
ever dialect-film anthology. As executive producer, Tan brings together five
short films by five local directors—Kirsten Tan, Liao Jiekai, Eva Tang, He
Shuming and Jun Chong—where each short film was conceived as a loving tribute
to a different Chinese dialect. No surprises there, given that the movie was
commissioned by the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (near Tanjong Pagar MRT),
where it was screened to a sold-out cinema on 25 May this year.

Yet the real surprise is that 667 now threatens to be sidelined by its unavailability to the
Singaporean public, much like the dialects to which it was meant to pay tribute.
At the time of this writing, no plans have been announced for future screenings
of 667 since its premiere in May. Perhaps
its filmmakers intend to enter the movie or its constituent chapters into
international festivals, or an island-wide release is still in the works. But
we should all be dismayed at the lack of any further press on 667 since its one-off screening. It is a
movie that deserves to be seen by a wider audience, especially a Singaporean
one, given both the uniqueness of its subject matter and its showcasing of the
idiosyncratic talents of five local filmmakers.

This review takes a closer look at each of their films, and at
what each contributes to 667 as a
whole.

NOCTURNE《夜曲》(dir. Liao Jie
Kai)

Featured dialect:
Hokkien

667’s first
chapter opens on a deceptively simple sight: the unadorned bedroom of a hut in
the 1970s, where a lone oil lamp crackles on the bedside drawer. As we soon
learn, one of the main characters is a leftist who must flee in the night into
the Malayan jungle. The film tracks slowly towards the inner window of the
bedroom, through which we observe as the characters hear this fateful news.
This first film, ‘Nocturne’, thus seems to be a historical adaptation of a
subplot in the late Yeng Pway Ngon’s epic novel Art Studio, tracking the heartbreak of the lover who is left behind
by these shifting sociopolitical circumstances.

But ‘Nocturne’ is helmed by Liao Jiekai (Red Dragonflies), a founder of the avant-garde
film collective 13 Little Pictures, and so the film doesn’t merely tread the
path of straightforward adaptation. Instead, it veers into self-examination, interrogating
what it means to replicate history (and the use of authentic Hokkien) on film. The
bedroom turns out to be a part of a film set, with fellow director Boo Junfeng (pictured left)
in his acting debut as Liao’s stand-in within the story of the film. As they
shoot the film, the characters get mired in discussions about how to translate
particular lines of dialogue to better fit the colloquial Hokkien needed by the
story. Boo’s character even has to navigate the tough choice between the translation
that is right for the film and the translation desired by the film’s clients.
(His producer’s long-suffering response: “They’re the clients, Junfeng.”)

‘Nocturne’ is thus a tantalising opener for the 667 anthology, showing us how each film
can move outwards from a straightforward story set in the milieu of its chosen
dialect, and into larger questions and more ambitious explorations of the
anthology’s choice of theme.

WU SONG SHA SAO《武松杀嫂》(dir. Kirsten
Tan)

Featured dialect:
Teochew

If ‘Nocturne’ embraces a more cerebral approach, 667’s second chapter offers a more
immediate feast for our eyes, ears and funny bones. Kirsten Tan is no stranger
to bold comic spectacle, hot off the Sundance success of her absurdist elephant-led
road-trip feature film Pop Aye. In
‘Wu Song Sha Sao’, Tan tackles the classic Teochew opera play of the same name,
in which the legendary Chinese hero Wu Song avenges his brother’s murder at the
hands of his sister-in-law. In Tan’s hands, though, this classic is brought to
new life through a vibrant restaging in a modern bar lounge.

Tan’s characteristic love for quirk is emblazoned even in
the chapter’s title sequence, which blares with techno music over a scarlet
silk screen and fevered slashes of calligraphy. The same goes for her restaging
of the Teochew opera. Her actors pop with colour—Pan Jin Lian in a jade robe,
and Wu Song in a paisley brown suit—against the sterile and empty bar lounge,
which might double as a critique of modern bars, and of the lack of audiences
who seek out Teochew opera.

But the film offers no time to linger on such distressing thoughts.
Not when there is more opera to be had, to which Tan doles out no end of comic touches:
oddly serious translations (e.g. “these hands that have baked sesame cake”); slow-mo
flourishes; abstract animations blooming in the background; and, at one climax,
a ritual toast restaged inventively as a domino drop shot.

A common sight at a
Teochew opera

As Tan has attested, she aimed with this film to “inject new
blood into a vanishing art form.” While she has succeeded plenty, her
directorial choices have not merely served to plaster an entertaining surface
over a dull story. On the contrary, the marriage of established opera and rising
director turns out to be a fruitful one, pushing Tan to explore new creative
horizons, while showing us what drew so many audiences to this Teochew opera long
before it was enshrined so memorably here.

LETTERS FROM THE MOTHERLAND《双地书简》(dir. He
Shuming)

Featured dialect:
Hainanese

With its third chapter, 667
takes yet another tonal swing, this time into the deeply heartfelt. Unlike the
prior experimental chapters, ‘Letters from the Motherland’ opts for a more
forthright treatment of its biographical story. The film centres on the
30-year-long correspondence between director He Shuming’s Hainan-born father
who retired in Singapore, and the caretaker of his ancestral home back in the
village of Qionghai, Hainan.

Over the course of the film, we hear these letters read out
in voiceover, learning of the decisions and sacrifices made by two men across
thousands of miles. Meanwhile, the film lulls us into a reverie, plying us with
gorgeously composed images of life in both places. There is a lot to savour
here, including dream-like shots of the grey ancestral brickhouse adorned with
firecrackers and Lunar New Year decorations, and unusually pensive shots of
people ekeing it out solo in the big city.

The title for ‘Letters from the Motherland’ might seem like
an unusually Chinese-nationalist one from a Singaporean director, until you
learn that the director grew up in Singapore with an aversion to the Hainanese
that his father spoke. The film is thus his corrective to that aversion,
delving with a more openhanded curiosity into his father’s personal connection
with the ‘motherland’ of Hainan. ‘Letters from the Motherland’ thus offers the
most earnest response to the anthology’s Mandarin title, 《回程667》, which asks for its directors to excavate and
rediscover their roots.

KE《客》(dir. Jun Chong)

Featured dialect:
Hakka

As the most untested of the filmmakers represented in the
anthology, director Jun Chong must have felt he had a lot to live up to in
‘Ke’, his debut film. Perhaps it is no surprise then that he found relief in a
tried-and-tested story: that of a visitor to Singapore seeking a place that is
no longer there, as in Troy Chin’s early Resident
Tourist comics or Boo Junfeng’s chapter in the SG50 film anthology 7 Letters.

Chong’s film, simply titled ‘Ke’ (a pun on the Chinese terms
for ‘Hakka’ and ‘guest’), features a Hakka visitor to Singapore searching for
her late grandfather, whom she believes to be buried in the urban Shuang Long
Shan cemetary in Commonwealth. The rest of the plot is, unfortunately, no
stranger to any Singaporean who might have seen Tan Pin Pin’s documentary short
‘Moving House’, or even glimpsed ‘Ke’s’ premise with a basic knowledge of how
Singapore’s urban planning system works. Yet the sight of the cemetary itself
is ‘Ke’s’ greatest asset. Its massive rows of graves, like mahjong tiles, are
set against the backdrop of an MRT station and the built-up HDB estates
flanking it on all sides—reminding us of the ways that our city presses on, and
the things that we might leave behind as a result.

THE VEILED WILLOW《柳影袈裟》(dir. Eva Tang)

Featured dialect:
Cantonese

Last but not least, 667
ends with ‘The Veiled Willow’, the name of a now-vanished Cantonese dish in
which bamboo fungus is stuffed with green vegetables. As the film’s title might
suggest, its focus on Cantonese culture has one particular target: Cantonese
cuisine, and specifically the iconic deep-fried yam ring.

Made in Singapore. Move over,
chilli crab

The yam ring has two competing origin stories, between two
of the four ‘Heavenly King’ chefs in 1960sSingapore: between Chef Hooi Kok Wai of Dragon Phoenix
Restaurant and Chef Tham Yew Kai of Lai Wah Restaurant. Eva Tang’s film focuses
on the latter, and specifically on the not-quite-love story between ‘Chef Tam’
(named after the Tam family for whom he worked) and a maidservant for the same
family.

Tang gives herself some difficult plates to juggle. She
tries to evoke the almost-romance between two inarticulate people who are
eventually separated by their working-class needs: Chef Tam must leave to work for a restaurant, while the maidservant remains steadfast with her family, despite the family's attempts to match-make them both. Amidst this tragic love story, Tang tries to keep things light-hearted with a couple of Cantonese-mispronunciation
jokes (‘Carrie’ vs ‘curry’, ‘cheese’ vs ‘pig shit’). Whether you think these
hold together tonally, no one can deny the majesty of the film’s central
sequence: the two love interests standing together as a yam-based roll of dough is kneaded with love, shaped with care, and then lowered
slowly into a wok of golden oil.

Eva Tang has already celebrated one local
Mandarin tradition with her xinyao documentary
feature The Songs We Sang. Here, with
‘The Veiled Willow’, she proudly celebrates another.Review by Colin Low